For the Record with Joel Pearson

For The Record, Volunteers / 8 June 2023 / Leave a Comment

Picture: Joel Pearson

Show: Virtual State, Thursdays 3-5pm

I joined mainFM in April 2022 after conversations with Alex from What’s Golden and Version from Girls On Air – their passion for the station had me immediately convinced that it was where I needed to be!

I moved to Castlemaine from Preston in September 2021. It didn’t take me long to settle in and get to know the community thanks to the excellent free event series at the Village Square and afternoon DJ sessions in the Theatre Royal Garden Bar.

The pilot episode of my show aired on Test Drive in April 2022 and I jumped into my current timeslot of Thursdays, 3-5pm just a couple of weeks later. Virtual State is the show to tune in to for the best in new electronic music. I love discovering music and sharing it with people. I also love creating context with music, blending it together and connecting the dots between various styles and sounds.

In the last year of making radio at mainFM I’ve learnt that although small, Castlemaine is a diverse and deeply connected community – everyone I meet seems to have fingers in pies, whether it’s caring for the natural environment, supporting Indigenous rights, making art, performing music or running an awesome business.

I admire Josh Meadows both for his dedication to the craft (500 episodes!) and authenticity – he’s got a way of talking to the listener like it’s two good friends sharing music recommendations over a cup of tea. I am always thrilled by Alan Fitzpatrick’s musical selections – on any given week he could be serving up banging techno, spaced-out dub, punky guitars or anything else you can imagine. Mondayitis has been eliminated since Jen Moore started Loose ‘N’ Up – I love the way she selects tunes, juxtaposing big classics like Grace Jones and Kraftwerk with oddball, underground or forgotten dance 12″s, all before you’ve had your Weet-Bix!

Community radio is both radio for the local community and a community of people who love radio.

The first guest to my show, Jim Westlake, reached out to me via Instagram after seeing my show playlists. We quickly bonded over a shared love of music and he asked if he could come on the show for an interview and mix. It was great to finally meet him face-to-face and we had a blast chatting both on and off air.

I use Instagram, Mixcloud and Soundcloud to promote Virtual State. On Instagram I post images with each episode’s playlist so that listeners and potential listeners can see at a glance what I’ve been playing recently. This is the primary way in which new listeners are attracted to the show, and was how my first guest, Jim Westlake, took interest and lined up an interview. Some artists have reached out and begun sending me tracks to play, too. Mixcloud hosts all my show recordings. Each episode also has the playlist details so that Mixcloud users can easily get track IDs as they listen. I want my shows to sound as good as anything you might hear on NTS or RinseFM, so I make sure to edit my show recordings so that the levels are balanced, the top and tail of the recordings are tidy, and the overall loudness is at a competitive level. This can be time consuming, particularly with an interview, as it may require adjusting the gain of small sections of dialogue, compressing and limiting the entire show, and rendering a new audio file. I use Soundcloud for hosting only the guest interviews from my show as it has stricter limits on music licensing and the amount of content you can host. I use Canva templates to create images to use on each of these platforms so that there’s a consistent look to the show’s branding (shout-out to my friend Renae Titchmarsh for helping me out with this!). Using the correct tags for an episode’s content is important across all platforms. I also have a Linktree page to connect between each of the platforms so that no matter how someone finds the show, they can access all of the content in just a few clicks.

It’s a privilege to be part of the mainFM family and it’s always a joy to chat with Steph, Sue and Alex in the office, and Alan and Josh before and after my show.